The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression • Hacker News Board

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#51

Post by moduspol » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #49

moduspol wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. People very rarely get kicked out of the movies for sneaking candy in. As a result, we know for certain virtually nobody is sneaking candy into the movies. Pretty simple stuff, guys.

I always find this method of argumentation intellectually dishonest, probably intentionally so. You try and shift the burden of proof onto your opponent and ask them to prove a negative, and in the absence of this intentionally impossible proof you advocate stripping the rights of franchisement from broad swaths of minority groups by using a cute analogy that doesn't really map well to reality. And then you pat yours…

It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it.

Here's an intellectually honest argument:

> Voter fraud probably happens sometimes, but not on any significant scale. Admittedly we don't really know because there's no way to verify. What we'd lose in preventing that isn't worth what we'd gain.

That's different from:

> It only happens 31 times in a billion votes because they didn't find evidence otherwise. There's no way to get evidence, and I'm against any measure that would allow it. Any argument against me is likely racist in nature.

This is what we're reading here.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#52

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #48

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More the later than the former. My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To use your words, I think there is bureaucratic incompete…

Honestly, I can't see how your response is anything but preaching a false equivalency. >My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To…

It's also specious to assign credit or culpability for things that happened 50 years ago to the organizations that exist today.

I mean, there are famous examples of those southern Democrats leaving the Democratic party and becoming Republicans. Like Strom Thurmond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#53

Post by travmatt » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 2:41 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #51

travmatt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this method of argumentation intellectually dishonest, probably intentionally so. You try and shift the burden of proof onto your opponent and ask them to prove a negative, and in the absence of this intentionally impossible proof you advocate stripping the rights of franchisement from broad swaths of minority groups by using a cute analogy that doesn't really map well to reality. And then you pat yours…

It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it. Here's an intellectually honest argument: > Voter fraud probably happens sometimes, but not on any significant scale. Admittedly we don't really know because there's no way to verify. What we'd lose in preventing that isn't worth what we'd gain. That's different from: > It only…

>It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it.

To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing. As a quick rundown, people register to vote and then they vote. If a person checks a voters id before voting, they are ensuring the person casting a vote is the same person who registered. This in no way prevents an illegal alien from registering to vote. Ensuring illegal aliens don't vote actually happens during the registering to vote, as most states require some proof before registering them. So as best I can tell you're advocating a solution that doesn't work and has nothing to do with a problem that doesn't exist.

For a dose of reality, election fraud does actually happen, but again, the ways in which it happens aren't addressed by voter id laws - again, because voter id laws aren't being pushed to solve any real problems.

""" This sort of misdirection is pretty common, actually. Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you’ll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren’t designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop.

Instead, requirements to show ID at the polls are designed for pretty much one thing: people showing up at the polls pretending to be somebody else in order to each cast one incremental fake ballot. This is a slow, clunky way to steal an election. Which is why it rarely happens. """[0]

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#54

Post by travmatt » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #52

travmatt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I can't see how your response is anything but preaching a false equivalency. >My point in both of my comments is both parties/any party operates in its self interest. The GOP do what they need to do and the Democrats do what they need to do. I don't see the democrats as some white light in a world of evil, I see a political organization that is willing to do whatever it needs to do for self preservation. To…

It's also specious to assign credit or culpability for things that happened 50 years ago to the organizations that exist today. I mean, there are famous examples of those southern Democrats leaving the Democratic party and becoming Republicans. Like Strom Thurmond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

The democrats who opposed civil rights hated big government, hated government deficits, and advocated de-regulation of industry.

If one were trying to categorize them according to today's ideologies, they'd be republican. They were more conservatives than they were democrats, and the only reason they were democrats was lingering bitterness over the civil war.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#55

Post by newshacker47 » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #31

newshacker47 wrote: post #12

The game pretty much consists of "do you want to turn back from voting, or continue to vote and have $BAD_THING happen" (if you are not a white programmer from California). The game format doesn't really do much here. Of course extremely long lines, abusive bosses, distant polling locations and abusive election observers are bad. Clicking yes/no doesn't really get the point across better. I'd rather read an article w…

There are lots of articles about it if that's how you prefer to consume the information.

Oh, no doubt that the information is out there in other formats. I'm interested in the concept of using games as a medium and perhaps my expectations were in the wrong place.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#56

Post by ensignavenger » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #24

nomoreaccoubts wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning on the other side is that you should do something to ensure the integrity of your elections. What stops non-citizens from voting? It's telling that the party opposed to voter verification laws stands to gain from the potential votes of tens of millions of illegal residents. As far as I know, no one is checking outside of states with voter ID laws.

>As far as I know, no one is checking outside of states with voter ID laws "A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast"[0] Seems like a pretty comprehensive check if you ask me. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

Doesn't sound 'comprehensive' to me- they didn't review every one of the billion ballots, they only reviewed a few that they got what they determined to be a credible report of voter impersonation.

As someone else has pointed out, voter impersonation would be a slow and difficult path to stealing an election, so I am skeptical that it takes place on a large scale, but I have reservations about the claims made in this review.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#57

Post by moduspol » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #53

moduspol wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it. Here's an intellectually honest argument: > Voter fraud probably happens sometimes, but not on any significant scale. Admittedly we don't really know because there's no way to verify. What we'd lose in preventing that isn't worth what we'd gain. That's different from: > It only…

>It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it. To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing. As a quick rundown, people register to vote and then they vote. If a person checks a voters id before voting, they are ensuring the person casting a vote is the same person who registered. This in no way prevents an illegal alien…

> To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing.

I'm not talking about illegal aliens voting.

My point was that it's unfair to claim voter fraud via impersonation never happens because we have little evidence of it happening, while acknowledging nobody has to verify who they are and fighting to ensure they never do.

If movie theaters don't employ security to pat down people and watch attendees over security cameras, candy will continue to be snuck in. They choose not to, and that's fine, but by no means does that suggest nobody is sneaking candy in. It just means they've chosen not to enforce it, just like we've chosen not to verify people are who they say they are.

If we were handing out money this way, it'd be abused instantly. If we verified identity this way before doing background checks for buying a gun, you guys would immediately point out how ridiculous it is. Yet voting is different.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#58

Post by AdamN » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #44

AdamN wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@ones_and_zeros is right, it's hyper partisan. The content (as thin as it is), is true ... but for the NYTimes to use a game produced by GOP Games, who only produce satire of Trump, is really less than ideal. Secondly, it creates a real division between, white, Latina (which remember is an ethnic group, not a racial group ... many Latinos in the US self-identify as white in addition to their ethnicity), and of course…

>@ones_and_zeros is right, it's hyper partisan Again, calling something partisan is the intellectually lazy way of trying to dodge an argument. It imparts no new information, and tries to establish a false equivalency between two parties for no reason other than 'fairness'. Again, you can't dismiss the civil war as 'partisan' because one political party wanted slaves and the other did not. >Secondly, it creates a rea…

> Again, you can't dismiss the civil war as 'partisan' because one political party wanted slaves and the other did not.

'partisan' is not a dismissive word and you can certainly call the civil war 'partisan' - that's the very definition.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/partisan

The video is partisan because it clearly reflects the viewpoint of one side and not the other, and the Civil War was fought by two partisan groups: the anti-slavery North and the pro-slavery South.

>In a country where a state GOP party researched the ways that blacks voted specifically to find the ways to best disenfranchise them, it's pretty safe to say these battles have been fought over racial lines for a long time. Trying to pretend these fights aren't over racial lines is again trying to establish some sort of false equivalency.

The fights are over racial lines - but they're also over socioeconomic lines and it's certainly not a unique problem to the US.

>You're incorrect. Minority voters are disproportionately affected by curtailing early voting because of precisely the situations you just mentioned, which is presumably why the game raised those issues. People who work hourly jobs have a harder time taking time off in large numbers to vote, and especially if those voters can't afford to stand in a line for hours at a time. The game is showing precisely why those long lines are intended to hurt those voters.

I didn't make that statement so I don't know what you're talking about. People who are already on the line aren't working. In this case she made the decision before finding out her child had dysentery. I agree with your point ... but the video game simply didn't address it.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#59

Post by travmatt » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:56 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #57

travmatt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's intellectually dishonest to claim something isn't happening while, in the same breath, fighting against any reasonable way to verify it. To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing. As a quick rundown, people register to vote and then they vote. If a person checks a voters id before voting, they are ensuring the person casting a vote is the same person who registered. This in no way prevents an illegal alien…

> To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing. I'm not talking about illegal aliens voting. My point was that it's unfair to claim voter fraud via impersonation never happens because we have little evidence of it happening, while acknowledging nobody has to verify who they are and fighting to ensure they never do. If movie theaters don't employ security to pat down people and watch attendees over security cameras,…

I'm going to again avoid your analogies, again because I find them misleading in crucial ways.

If your talking about voter fraud via impersonation, I find you have even less of an argument then you did when I assumed you were referring to illegal aliens voting.

As I've cited frequently in this thread, stealing an election via in-person vote fraud is an extremely inefficient and difficult way to steal an election. It's ridiculous to suggest that you are concerned about voter fraud, and then focus solely on the types of fraud empirically proven to happen least. It's equally ridiculous to say that because the empirical evidence we do have disproves your opinion, then that research must be wrong and thusly you don't have an onus to provide any proof of your allegations. Much more voter fraud happens with absentee and mail-in ballots, but since these voters are typically white that is OK.

In any case, you are trying to dress up the actual intentions of the laws to nobler causes than reality suggests. State GOP parties have already been found in court judgements to use Voter ID laws as weapons to suppress minority votes, and I quote 'with surgical precision.' They've weaponized DMV's toward this goal, by shutting down centers in minority areas, cutting hours, and directing employees to avoid giving out free voter ID's and not advertise such services.

These laws are explicitly racist because they specifically target minorities to deprive them of their rights to vote, and this is why they have been, and continue to be struck down in courts of law across the country.

Re: The NYT Released an Oregon Trail Style Game about Voter Suppression

#60

Post by moduspol » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #59

moduspol wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest I'm not sure what you're arguing. I'm not talking about illegal aliens voting. My point was that it's unfair to claim voter fraud via impersonation never happens because we have little evidence of it happening, while acknowledging nobody has to verify who they are and fighting to ensure they never do. If movie theaters don't employ security to pat down people and watch attendees over security cameras,…

I'm going to again avoid your analogies, again because I find them misleading in crucial ways. If your talking about voter fraud via impersonation, I find you have even less of an argument then you did when I assumed you were referring to illegal aliens voting. As I've cited frequently in this thread, stealing an election via in-person vote fraud is an extremely inefficient and difficult way to steal an election. It'…

I didn't argue for any voter ID laws, and I didn't argue that in-person vote fraud happens any more frequently than you think it does. I didn't argue your study was wrong, it's probably right. I'm surprised they even found 31 credible incidents when you have no way of verifying the person says who they say they are when they cast the vote. I also didn't even mention voter fraud via absentee or mail-in ballots. I'll take your word for it that it is a bigger problem, but it's not relevant to my point.

I'll keep it short this time. Here's the point:

> It's unfair to claim voter fraud via impersonation never happens because we have little evidence of it happening, while acknowledging nobody has to verify who they are and fighting to ensure they never do.

Agree or disagree?